The war on ageing: what's
wrong with fighting the ravages
of time?
John A. Vincent
1
When is banana ripe?
2
The war on ageing
•
•
Winning The War Against Aging
Americans are frantically spending
millions to look and feel younger.
Meanwhile, new scientific discoveries
are promising us The Fountain of
Youth. How can this war against aging
finally be won?
http://www.buzzle.com/editorials/8-102006-105105.asp
•
•
•
Stay Fit To Fight The Ageing Process
Are you prepared to go to the gym for
one hour, three times a week, for 20
weeks all in the name of science? If so
researchers at The University of
Nottingham want to hear from you.
As part of their on-going research into
the ageing process, scientists in the
School of Biomedical Sciences need a
team of volunteers ..
http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/arti
cles/90387.php
3
Ageism and knowledge of old age
• Why is ageism so prevalent?
• Why do we fear old age?
• What particular forms does it take in early
21st century
• How can we understand it? Understanding
is the necessary first step to challenge and
change it.
4
Cultural context - medicalisation of death
and old age.
• Western scientific medicine has transformed old
age from a natural event to a disease. Successful
old age is not seen as it was in the 18th and 19th
century as the outcome come of a moral life but as
the absence of disease. Old Age has become an
object of scientific and rational knowledge
controlled by experts.
• You are not “only old as you feel” – when there is
a scientifically trained expert waiting to tell you
the basis of your feelings, your probabilities of
survival, and which drug will make it all bearable.
5
Cultural context - old age and biological
science
• Ageing in the contemporary West is considered to
be a biological process [as opposed to a social,
psychological, spiritual or other process]
• Biological understanding of ageing is advancing
rapidly particularly in cell science, bio-chemistry
and genomics
• Scientists can now modify the life span of model
species – yeasts, fruit flies, nematode worms and
mice.
• Should we fight the ravages of time and seek to
extend the human life span?
6
Cultural context - rejection of the ageing body
• The development of the modern concept of
self – rise of individualism
• Relationship of self to body
• Modern view of body as project
• Body as moral signifier – ‘letting yourself
go’
• Problems of the ageing body
7
Social context – the boundaries of old age
• The markers and social processes by which old
age is distinguished from middle age have been
examined.
• Excellent historical work has identified the
establishment of retirement as a key marker of old
age at 60 or 65.
• Much less researched is the transition out of old
age. There is only one way to leave old age (at the
moment) and that is through death.
8
Social context – the boundaries of old age
• Science is the principle method through
which old age transitions are defined and
understood
• Modern death means:
–
–
–
–
Death of the body
Caused by biological failure
Unredeemed by medical intervention
Certified by a medical practitioner
9
My research - kinds of anti-ageing science
My research is based on an examination of the
language and cultural concepts used in anti-ageing
science and medicine.
Four types of anti-ageing based on biological and
medical science can be identified.
• ‘symptom alleviation’
• ‘life expectancy extension’
• ‘life span extension’ and
• ‘abolition’
10
1. Anti-ageing as symptom alleviation
Scientific attempts to hide, postpone or relieve the
symptoms of biological ageing
(i) cosmetic – powder and paint, anti-wrinkle cream
to disguise the signs of ageing
(ii) prophylactic – exercise and diet or vitamin pills
to stave off the onset of physical ageing and its
signs
(iii) compensatory – viagra, HRT designed to reinvigorate failing functions to a youthful standard.
11
“looking ten years younger”
12
1. Anti –ageing as a cosmetic strategy
• These symptom alleviation strategies have to be
understood in the context of a society which has
come to understand body image as the key
component of personal identity.
• Thus the implicit definition of old age in this form
of anti-ageing is that of appearance. To look old is
to be old.
• The boundary between youth and old age is
marked in this way of looking at the world by
physical appearance.
• Death is the social death of being unable to
present a socially acceptable body.
13
2. Anti-ageing as life expectancy extension
• There are powerful claims of an imminent
increase in life expectancy of approximately three
to six years are based on new attempts to treat or
eliminate the diseases which commonly cause
death in old age.
• Would the elimination of disease mean people
reach their full life span or produce ever
increasing longevity? Hence debates as to
– whether there is a ‘natural’ limit to human life span?
– whether the life span was determined by evolution? and
– whether ageing should be considered to be a disease?
14
http://stemcells.nih.gov/info/scireport/2006report.htm
15
2. Old age as disease
• The dominant view of old age from this discourse
sees it as a stage in life medically defined. The
critical distinctions being where people are in the
first instance ‘at risk’ from a set of specific
diseases and thereafter afflicted by them.
• Old age from this perspective in not
fundamentally about appearance of the body per
se but about the diseased condition of the human
body.
• What marks old age from youth is its disease
status.
• Death is the inability of the body to survive the
16
disease.
3. Anti-ageing as life span extension
• Recent scientific interventions have achieved
dramatic increases in life span amongst yeast,
nematode worms, fruit-flies and mice. It is
suggested that these experiments open the
possibility of greatly extended human longevity of
perhaps twenty to sixty years.
• Bio-gerontologists have developed new techniques
and understanding of intra-cellular bio-chemistry
and how it relates to ageing. Their prime antiageing strategies take the form of stem cell
therapies, gene therapy and bio-chemical methods
for upgrading cell maintenance capabilities.
17
The final stage of apoptosis; cleaning up after the
death
18
• From the perspective of the bio-gerontologists
ageing is a fundamental biological process
applicable to all life dependent on sexual
reproduction not just humans. Hence old age is the
end stage of a sequence of biological
developmental processes.
• ‘Old age’ can be identified from cellular
processes, hence cellular senescence.
• It is distinguishable from youth by biological
markers such as shortened telomeres or the
cessation of mitosis.
• Death is cell death - apoptosis or necrosis.
• This view detaches old age from the level of
humanity and even level of the organism.
19
4. Anti-ageing as immortality
• Some bio-gerontologists make the explicit claim it will be
possible to reverse ageing and to create a form of
immortality (they don’t exclude death by accident merely
death by ageing).
• The best publicised of these is the SENS programme
(Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence)
promoted by Aubrey De Grey.
• Other scientists warn of over optimism. They are
concerned to avoid undeliverable claims that shift the
debate back into the realm of fantastical prophecies and out
of the realm of ‘science’.
• Significant life extension is not currently a possibility for
humans although many assume it to be a readily
achievable goal. There is considerable dispute about the
time-scale for scientific ‘progress’ and about the priority
such science should be given.
20
21
4. Immortality and old age
• Old age from this perspective is an unnecessary burden; it
is a result of failure to technically control a biological
process.
• The boundary between old age and death is removed
leaving the boundary between youth and old age
problematic.
• Science plays a key cultural role in modern society in
authenticating knowledge and is presumed in modern
cultures to be an omniscient problem solver. Hence reports
of dramatic new discoveries on ageing reinforce the view
of old age and death as technically soluble problems.
• However this set of understandings inevitably condemns
old age and older people to the status of failure and to
meaningless social roles.
22
Two questions: can it be done? should it be
done?
• As social scientists we can alert people to the
consequences of the belief that it can be done.
• And we can comment on the link between
culturally dominant values and the arguments
produced by philosophers and ethicists.
• Christine Overall (2003) Aging, Death, and
Human Longevity: A Philosophical Inquiry
contrasts prolongivist v. apologist points of view
23
‘Apologist’ arguments
against the prolongation of human life
1) Why death should not be dreaded
2) Why death is a natural part of the ‘rhythm
of life’.
3) Why the human life span is long enough
4) Why the social cost of prolonging human
life is too high.
24
‘Prolongivist’ arguments in favour of
extended life.
1) The intrinsic value of longevity – gain experience,
knowledge, wisdom (?) with increased life.
2) The intrinsic value of life – all life is good so the more the
better. [this is the one that convinces Overall most.]
3) The right to life – ones share of life doesn’t get used up or
run out. Inequalities of life expectancy are unfair.
4) Advances in health care and other contributions to human
well-being – life can only get better [cannot stop science,
gain from increased knowledge and experience of those
who have already acquired knowledge]
25
Other key issues
• Resource limits of the planet
• Loss of all one knows
• The problem of boredom - “millions long for immortality
who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy
Sunday afternoon.”
• Preserving personal identity [the key role of extreme
individualism of modern culture is always underplayed in
the philosophical debates and sustaining collective
identities undervalued]
• Chronological age and its physical limitations [what age do
you want to be immortal at?] shades into human
enhancement and post-humanism.
26
What are the consequences of life without
limits?
• “If prolonging life is, ceteris paribus, desirable,
are there any reasonable limits to the length of a
good life? How much more life is it desirable to
have? Is there an upper limit to the human life
span that is incompatible with being human? The
last is not a question primarily about biology but is
rather about what it means to be human in moral
and existential terms rather than physical terms.”
Overall 2003:122
27
Conclusions
• Can we extend the life span? – not now,
unlikely in the foreseeable future, not by
definition but because of shear complexity
• Should we ? – more important and
immediate question, at root of ageism, so
we need to clarify our priorities.
28
Conclusions
The great investment of time, resources, and cultural
ingenuity to find ways to live longer and if possible for
ever, have consequences for old age. Fantasies of
immortality are bad for older people.
These attitudes:
• Identify old age as a problem waiting for a solution
• Postpone action on current problems of old age
• Seek technical solutions to cultural problems
• Waste resources in pursuit of undesirable goals
• Inhibit research into death as a natural event and the final
stage of the life course as a positive meaningful coda.
29
This presentation, and various
papers can be viewed at:
http://www.people.exeter.ac.uk/JVincent/
30